BitLocker startup error 0x26000070

I’m using BitLocker for HD encryption on all partitions, USB disks and USB pens. For USB* it works fine by just asking for a password. But for HD encryption it is a bit more complicated.

Basically BitLocker should encrypt your HD without you having to provide any password at every startup. It should also be secure from tampering because if anything changes on the PC then it looses the key and you have to provide a recovery key/USB-pen.

Since I’m using a docking station for my laptop it kept asking me for recovery key at almost every reboot. I quickly discovered that this was related to the BIOS BOOT ORDER, where the docking station would sneak in some new devices. Simply telling BIOS that I only want to boot from HD fixed that.

Later I was so smart that I tampered with boot settings (BCD), and now I’m getting a 0x26000070 at almost every boot. The great internet contains very little information about this, but I managed with some lucky guessing to track it down to some PCI Express settings during boot. Something about using BIOS or OS IRQ settings?

Anyway, if you have this problem then try this: BCDEDIT /SET usefirmwarepcisettings false